Three Things for Your Personal Brand

Personal branding is important for every marketer, if only to prove to potential clients that you understand what a brand is and how to build it.

According to an article I recently read in Deliver magazine, there are three main things that every personal brand needs. And frankly, I agree with all three. They are:

Expand your expertise
This is my favorite one of the three because it involves one of my favorite pastimes: learning to do new things. It’s the reason I manage a variety of groups on LinkedIn and the impetus behind me starting this and Bountiful® Wi-Fi’s blogs. It’s also the reason I’ve accepted so many different positions at my current company, from product design to quality assurance. I’m willing to do whatever they need me to do because it allows me to learn about several different parts of the business.

Boost your visibility
As a natural extension of expanding your expertise, your visibility will increase. You’ll meet new people who will therefore expand your network. Also, you should pick a few key places on the web to put information about yourself. I suggest LinkedIn, Facebook and one other, more industry-specific network. I like SocialMediaToday.com for the third one, personally. It's for social networking professionals only, so it's the perfect, industry-specific social networking site for me.

Protect your brand
With the additional visibility comes an increased danger. If someone does a search of your name, they’re bound to find the bad along with the good. Fortunately, this increased visibility also makes it easier for you to find and deal with threats. I’m not going to get into how to deal with affronts to your character in this post, but there are many ways to stop people from marring your otherwise reputable brand.